


Time is still and my heart won't hold forever

by queenofthenight



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Canon Divergence - Captain America: The Winter Soldier, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-31
Updated: 2015-01-08
Packaged: 2018-03-04 12:05:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3067196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenofthenight/pseuds/queenofthenight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The AU where Steve realizes that the Winter Soldier is a victim before he realizes that the Winter Soldier is Bucky Barnes. Steve sees an equal — another super-soldier — and understands that he’s never had the choices Steve got. So many of Steve’s friends think it’s crazy, but Steve decides to save him anyway.<br/>(And the Winter Soldier wants to trust this man — this target — who’s offering help, and kindness, even though he has no idea why).<br/>Because Steve Rogers sees the best in everyone, and it is that quality that brings him back the person he loves most in the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I think wintergaydar.tumblr.com was the one that came up with this prompt? If it was you, send me a message and I'll set the story as a gift to you :) Otherwise I'll send them a link to it on tumblr once I've finished writing it, because I have very limited internet at the moment and don't have the ability to go searching.
> 
> Original prompt was:  
> "I really need to read or write the canon-divergent story where Steve realizes that the Winter Soldier is a victim before he realizes that the Winter Soldier is Bucky Barnes. Steve sees an equal — another super-soldier — and understands that he’s never had the choices Steve got; where so many of Steve’s friends think it’s crazy, but Steve decides to save him, anyway.  
> (And the Winter Soldier wants to trust this man — this target — who’s offering help, and kindness, even though he has got no idea why).  
> It’s reckless, and borderline suicidal, but Steve does it — Steve finds a way to offer the Winter Soldier a way out from HYDRA, to give him protection, Steve defends him from everyone who says that he is a monster — without having ever even seen his face.  
> Because Steve Rogers sees the best in everyone, and I want the AU where it is that quality that brings him back the person he loves most in the world. The AU where Steve takes the muzzle-mask off the Winter Soldier’s face the first time that the Winter Soldier lets him come close enough, and finds Bucky Barnes. "

“He’s been out of cryofreeze too long,” a tech says.

“Then wipe him and start over,” Pierce orders.

The damage has been done. The programming was already unstable, countless details lost to time and repeated translation. To HYDRA, he was an asset, a tool; they would never resort to reasoning with him otherwise. His time is coming.

The Winter Soldier bares his teeth as the restraints wrap over his arms. Freedom is near.

* * *

It’s early hours when Steve gets a call from Tony Stark.

“Steve! Hope I’m not interrupting anything. Even if I am, drop it, because it’s not at all important compared to this. You need to come to Avengers Tower, ASAP. We’ve got a guest that needs dealing with pronto.”

Steve groans. They’d finished dealing with the helicarriers and HYDRA’s infiltration of SHIELD only yesterday, and even supersoldiers need to sleep every now and again. Sure, after the fight with the Winter Soldier on the bridge everything had gone pretty smoothly- they’d figured out HYDRA’s plans and the guy hadn’t shown up again, presumably called away for something else after having taken out Fury- and Steve is almost certain that whilst there are a million loose ends to tie up, they can all wait until morning. He says so.

“No, seriously, Cap, you’re gonna want to be here for this. You can sleep tomorrow. We just took down SHIELD; there’s nobody left to deal with this but us. Fury’s gone off to Europe and we can’t get in contact with him. You’ve still got your bike, right? If you’re not here in fifteen minutes I’m coming to pick you up myself. C’mon, Steve, do it for me, I can’t deal with this on my own.”

Tony seems genuinely agitated, and not in an I’ve-had-too-much-coffee-and-forgot-to-sleep-again kind of way, so Steve hauls himself out of bed and into clothes he knows he can fight in if he needs to. The ride up to Stark’s place is quiet, for the city, and the broken remnants of their battles have mostly been cleared away. Only shattered glass and scorch marks remain to show they’d ever been there at all. Life goes on, after all. Steve knows they did the right thing; that if they hadn’t taken down HYDRA millions of people would be dead by now. He just doesn’t want to think about the countless lives they disrupted while doing it, of all the people who were hurt simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s a thought he files away for later. One problem at a time.

Jarvis doesn’t brief him as soon as he steps into the Tower, but directs him towards the Hulk’s room instead, the one Tony triple-reinforced just in case. Has something gone wrong with Bruce? If it has, why aren’t they just saying so? It’s not like Stark to be so close-mouthed.

The whole team is waiting outside, bar Thor. Someone’s pulled the table and chairs from a few rooms over into the hallway, and Natasha grimaces and slides him a file as he sits down. Everybody has one. Steve opens it to find a picture of the Winter Soldier, still complete with the muzzle-mask, frozen in some kind of cryo-chamber. Tony said they had a guest. Does this mean…?

“Yes,” Natasha says quietly. “He’s here. Keep reading. It’s important that you know everything.”

So he does. Some of the file is deliberately vague, and some parts of it contradict others, but Steve can make out enough to be more and more appalled the more he learns. The man is a super-soldier, just like him, only he never got the chances Steve got. Instead, he got shoved into a brainwashing machine and made to do HYDRA’s dirty work for seventy years. When he wasn’t, he was left in a cryo-chamber that he likely only survived because of his version of the serum. The file doesn’t even refer to him as a person; it refers to him as ‘the Asset’. Steve has a brief moment of panic where he realises that in another lifetime, this could have been him- he was fighting the same war, after all. He doesn’t doubt that the brainwashing machine is effective. This man, this unknown soldier, how could he have ever been expected to fight it?

Obviously Natasha sees that he’s finished reading, because she begins to outline the situation. “The man known as the Winter Soldier arrived at Avengers Tower just after two o’clock this morning, turning himself in as a prisoner. I hope you all have doubts about his sincerity, as he is one of the most dangerous men on this planet. It’s likely that bringing him into this building was exactly what he wanted. That’s why we’re having this meeting here, where we can react to any threat immediately.

“The Winter Soldier is responsible for a multitude of important deaths over the years that have shaped the course of the last century. These alone could have him locked up for life. The only reason we haven’t immediately done so is that we have no real idea of what his capabilities are, and it’s likely that he could break out of any prison we put him into. This, and the fact that we don’t know what he wants. If one of us is his target, then this could well be a suicide mission. He claims that he broke his programming, that he doesn’t want Hydra to be able to use him any more. His own suggestion was that we kill him so that there’s no chance they can ever take him back. This is the choice we have to make.”

Hawkeye speaks up first. “What do you mean, choice? There’s not even  _one_ viable option. We can’t keep him here, and we can’t let him go. I hate to say it, but we really might have to kill him. It’s not like we haven’t killed HYDRA goons in the heat of battle before. Can we really afford to take the moral high ground?”

“I don’t know,” Bruce says. “What right have we to play judge, jury and executioner? Why can’t we hold him here while he undergoes a proper trial?”

“He never _would_ get a proper trial,” Natasha says. “HYDRA still holds positions of power within the system, unfortunately, and besides that he’s been all over the news. No, the less people that know about this the better.”

"Why do we have to make a snap decision?" Bruce counters. "If that room can hold me, it can hold him."

"Because he's _clever_ ," Clint says. "And yes, it should, but we don't know for sure that nobody working here at the Tower has been compromised. We wouldn't know until it was too late." 

“I’ll take him,” Steve says abruptly.

Tony chokes. “And do what, Steve, the man’s not a stray cat! Did you forget about the bit where he tried to kill you?”

“Did you forget about the bit where he was brainwashed?” Steve fires back. “And you, Clint, nobody blames you for what you did under Loki’s control. How is that any different to this?”

“We know who Clint was before he got taken over, though,” Bruce points out. “We have no idea who this man was before the programming. Perhaps he volunteered for it; HYDRA agents have done stupider things in search of power. Even if he was sympathetic to our cause, it’s been seventy years of repeated attacks on his mind. Some things you don’t recover from, Steve. It’s very possible that we couldn’t help him even if we wanted to.”

“So you’re just going to give up, is that it?” Steve asks. “I thought we were supposed to be helping people. Well, here’s someone who needs our help. He’s been through torture already, I won’t let you put him through it again.”

“This is crazy,” Tony says. “Are you actually, honest-to-God choosing the Winter Soldier over us? You’re Captain America. He’s the HYDRA assassin that was sent to kill you. Shit, Cap, I know you kind of have a saving-people thing, but don’t you think you’re taking this a little too far? This is borderline suicidal. You all agree with me, right? Whatever we do, we can’t just let him go free.”

“Much as it pains me to say this, Tony’s right,” Natasha says. “I know you want to do the right thing, Steve, but-”

“And what would  _you_ do with him, then?” Steve demands.

“…I don’t know,” she admits.

“Anyone? Can anyone else come up with a reasonable solution?” He sweeps his gaze across the room, making eye contact with each of them in turn. Nobody offers a solution.

“Then he’s coming with me,” Steve says.

“You’re the stubbornest bastard I’ve ever met,” Clint says, getting up from his chair. It's a surrender, a sign that the meeting is over. Natasha follows suit, then reaches into her purse, rips a hole in the lining, and pulls out a key.

“I can see we’re not going to stop you, so we might as well make this as painless as possible,” she says. “It’s the key to a safehouse a little way south of here. If anything goes badly, we can be there reasonably quickly, but you’re not near enough to anyone else that someone could get caught in the crossfire and get hurt. If this whole thing _is_ a trap, well… that’s all on you, Cap, you’re the one who wants to see the best in this guy. I- for both our sakes, I hope you’re right.”

The key drops from her hand into Steve’s waiting palm. “Thank you,” he says sincerely. “I appreciate it.”

“Don’t make me regret this,” she says. “Alright, Stark. Looks like it’s time to go.”

Tony frowns. “You heard the lady, Jarvis. We’re going in.”

“Of course, sir,” comes the reply, and the door to the Winter Soldier slides slowly open.

Steve goes in first. Physically, it makes sense; he’s built the strongest of all of them, except perhaps Thor, but Thor’s not here. The Winter Soldier doesn’t make any kind of move, though, just sits in the corner with his knees drawn up to his chest. Despite the mask being firmly in place, they can hear him clearly.

“You’ve made a decision,” he says quietly.

“Yes,” Natasha says.

“I don’t care,” the Winter Soldier says. “Keep me away from HYDRA and you can do what you like with me. I won’t let them use me any longer.”

“Are you absolutely sure about this?” Natasha whispers to Steve. “I’d expect a man who’s gone through that kind of mental trauma to be a little less lucid. He’s calm. He knows what’s going on around him. Don’t expect this to be easy.”

“You’re coming with me,” Captain America tells him, ignoring her. “I’m not going to let you be tortured or killed or taken back by HYDRA. You’re going to be safe.”

The Winter Soldier’s head shoots up. “I tried to kill you,” he says, matter-of-fact.

“And now you’re _not_ trying to kill me,” Steve says as though it really is that simple.

The Winter Soldier looks at each of them in turn. “Your friends don’t agree with you,” he assesses. “They have more sense.”

“Shouldn’t you be glad I’m so foolish?” Steve says bitterly. He knows he’s not gaining any favour with this stunt.

“Not foolish. Reckless,” the Winter Soldier clarifies. Steve grits his teeth and says nothing. He can’t disagree with that, but in the past all his reckless stunts have been for the greater good. And here- here is someone that desperately needs Steve’s help. It could be a trap; it’s very likely to be a trap, in fact, and Steve knows that. But the man before him has been submitted to countless, nameless atrocities by HYDRA, and he wouldn’t be Steven G. Rogers if he didn’t at least try to help someone who needed it. How could he stand with his head held high if he took the easier, safer route and turned him in to the remainder of SHIELD for even more? No. There never was a question about what he was going to do. He's never backed down from a fight before, and he sure as hell isn't going to now.  
  
  



	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not going to promise regular updates, because I'm trying to write this and a Sherlock story that I should have updated months ago and also do a bunch of other things, so they'll come when they come. It'll be a nice surprise when it happens, won't it? 
> 
> I actually had this chapter written about a week ago, but I had to revise it a bunch of times because it just wasn't working. I'm still not 100% happy with it, but if I tinker with it any more I'm probably going to go mad, so here it is :) 
> 
> Oh! I forgot to say last time: the title is from the Howling Bells song Into The Woods. *nods* Well, enjoy!

Natasha drives them to the safe house, since there’s not really room on Steve’s bike for more than one person. He doesn’t know where she dredges the first car up from, and they switch cars twice, once at a garage and once in a car wash. Steve thinks she’d have liked it to be a lot more times, but the whole thing was organised in about five minutes. It’s kind of scary what she can do in five minutes.

The safe house turns out to be a dumpy place right on the edge of the docks, where the bright lights and crowded streets devolve into what seem to be empty, crumbling buildings. Steve knows the city well enough to know that its very emptiness is suspicious. Even when places are condemned, people who have nowhere else to go will find them and start anew.

When he surveys the area properly, the signs of habitation are obvious. Over there, a window box is growing a neat clump of mint. An old bicycle with new tyres leans against a rusted bench. Curtains twitch in windows as they pass.

“Gang territory,” Natasha explains. “Not completely empty, unfortunately, but they’re not as dumb as normal civilians. They’ll lay low if anything happens.”

She presses a button and a garage door slides upwards nearby. There’s just enough time for her to guide the car in before it closes again, the crash it makes as it shuts reverberating through the car. 

“Home sweet home,” Steve says cheerily in an attempt to defuse the tension. Natasha glares at him and he shuts up.

“You’re virtually unprotected here,” she tells him sternly. “I needed at least one safe house that couldn’t be hacked into and turned against me and this is it. Your biggest threat is already in the house with you, so pay attention.”

Steve nods. The Winter Soldier sits still in his seat and pretends he isn’t listening. 

“If anything happens, or if you feel your location has been discovered, contact us immediately. I don’t want either of you taken by HYDRA. This isn’t negotiable, Rogers. If something happens and we need you, we’ll send someone out to pick you up.”

“Yes ma’am,” he says, and salutes haphazardly. “Is that all?”

Natasha allows herself a small smile. “Yes. Go. I don’t want to hear from you for at least a week. You’re far more trouble than you’re worth.”

“I try,” Steve says, and slides out of the car. His bag and another that Natasha packed are in the trunk, so he grabs those and slings them just inside the doorway to the house before going in further.

The apartment is just as shabby inside as it is out, but the dusty curtains cover the windows fully and the power is still working, which is a blessing. Steve finds that the doorway opens out into a tiny kitchenette adjoining what’s clearly supposed to be a living room, but it’s far too cramped to be considered comfortable. The dining table and chairs take up too much space for there to be room for a sofa, and the television’s been shoved all the way into a corner. He turns a tap experimentally and water trickles through. Even though he knows that Natasha was keeping this place ready, he’s still surprised that it works. 

The Winter Soldier stands intently behind him, patiently waiting for invitation or instruction.

“If you go wash up, I’ll get us something to eat,” Steve says, assuming that Natasha has stocked the cupboards with something edible. There’s even a tiny fridge shoved under the bench, though Steve doesn’t hold up much hope of it containing anything. 

There’s no reply, and when Steve looks up the Winter Soldier is gone. He’s reluctantly impressed by how silent he can be. Steve couldn’t do it, that’s for sure. Natasha, maybe, but Natasha isn’t usually kitted out in heavy armour and army boots. 

The cupboards yield a selection of tinned beans, muesli, bread, a crumpled packet of chips and eleven bottles of Chinese five-spice. The spices get pushed into a corner, because he really doesn’t trust them to actually contain what they say on the label, and even if they _did_ he has no idea when one should actually use Chinese five-spice. The fridge, too, is filled with fresh fruits and vegetables, plus a few squashy packets in white butcher’s paper. Somebody must have been in to stock up before they got here. Obviously Natasha’s still got contacts that are good.

Sandwiches are easiest, Steve decides, so he pulls out a couple of plates, dusts them down with his shirt and sets to work. The cheese and bread are both pre-sliced, as is the ham, which is good, because Steve can’t actually find any knives in the kitchen. It’s probably a sensible precaution, given who he’s living with. Next is the lettuce, which Steve is glad to note isn’t one of the weird fancy varieties, and a brownish-purple container of liquid which turns out to contain sliced beetroot. It’s a little sweet for Steve’s taste, but he puts it on the sandwich anyway.

He makes ten, piles five on his plate, and leaves the rest out on the bench for the Winter Soldier. The remote for the television is sitting on the table, and he flicks it on idly while he chews. He’d much rather read the news, but despite all of Tony’s protests that it’s perfect, the StarkPhone is just too small for his fingers, and he doubts he’s going to be able to get hold of a newspaper anytime soon. Besides, TV is pretty great, even if the advertisements are baffling a lot of the time. He stops on a channel showing the French news and fumbles his way through with the help of the subtitles. It’s been a while since he’s heard French; he’s getting rusty. 

He’s about to bite into his fourth sandwich when a damp arm snakes its way around his throat and pulls tight. One of the disadvantages of the serum, Steve has found, is that he burns through oxygen much faster than most people. If he struggles, or if slightly more pressure is applied, he’ll be out in less than a minute. In the background, the TV scrolls through a special report on HYDRA’s latest attempt to control the world via the SHIELD helicarriers.

“Don’t trust me,” the Winter Soldier says. “You could be dead by now.”

Steve swallows. “But I’m not,” he says. He doesn’t try to struggle. Steve’s grown a little in the past year, learned about being subtle rather than charging headlong into every threat that comes his way. He’s going to assess the situation in its entirety _before_ he does anything stupid. Natasha would be proud. 

Well, okay, Natasha would probably kill him herself for letting the Winter Soldier sneak up on him, but nobody’s perfect.

“I’m not your friend,” he says harshly. “I’m dangerous.”

“I know,” Steve says. “I made you some food, why don’t you sit down and we can talk about it?”

The arm loosens slightly. “You don’t know what HYDRA’s done to me,” he says. “ _I_ don’t know what they’ve done to me. You mustn’t-”

“It’s okay not to trust yourself,” Steve says soothingly. “Come and sit down, and you can tell me what I need to know.”

“I don’t _know_ what you need to know!” he hisses, and lets go of Steve entirely to stalk around the room. The dim light glints off his goggles. “That’s the problem. There are whole stretches of my life that are missing. Anything longer than a week ago is wrong. I have a hundred different lives and stories shoved into my head, and no way to tell which of those lives are real. I know things without knowing how I know them.”

He stops; snaps his head back to face Steve. His hair whips against the cool black of the mask.

“For all I know, I’m still a HYDRA agent,” he says. “And you’ve brought me here, alone, to a location that isn’t secure. Are you honestly this stupid?”

“I’m trying to _help_ you,” Steve says indignantly. “I don’t think it’s too much to ask for you to try to tell me what you can.”

“And I don’t think it’s too much to ask for you to have a little self-preservation,” the Winter Soldier says. “What happens to the world when you’re gone? How many people could do what you do?”

“The world survived when I was frozen for seventy years. I think it can manage without me.”

“What, you mean the years where HYDRA infiltrated all the world’s governments? Yeah, that sure went well.”

“And you think I would’ve been able to stop it?” Steve asks incredulously. “I’m one man.”

“Neither of us are ordinary men,” the Winter Soldier says angrily. “If you don’t think that both of us have the power to tip this war over the edge, you’re stupider than I thought.”

“Well, what do you want me to do?” Steve demands. “We’re here, and I’m not going to give up on you. Call me stupid all you like, but I’m going to do what I think is best.”

“Then you’re wrong,” the Winter Soldier says. “The best thing to have done would have been to kill me and be done with it.”

“I’m not _murdering_ you!”

“Then you’re murdering all the people HYDRA will force me to kill once they find me and take me back.”

“I’m not letting HYDRA take you back, either.”

The Soldier laughs, somewhat hysterically. “You don’t _let_ HYDRA do anything. They do what they want and take what they want. And maybe you _can_ stop them! But I’m not going to rely on that. Too many people make promises they just can’t keep.”

Steve opens his mouth to reply, but the Winter Soldier has already grabbed the plate of sandwiches and stalked out of the room, boots thumping against the floor. He resists the urge to go after him. If he needs space, then Steve will give him space. He’s down at the VA with Sam often enough to know that different people cope in different ways, and when somebody’s had their space and privacy violated as often as the Winter Soldier has, then it would be a terrible idea to leave him with nowhere to retreat to. His bedroom can be his safe space. Steve will be here when he’s okay again.

The television is still murmuring away in the corner, and Steve shuts it off with a grimace. There's a wealth of information everywhere in this world, but he doesn’t know what to trust anymore. Natasha’s file dump proved that HYDRA had their fingers in every pie. 

Of course! SHIELD’s files. There’s not nearly enough people out there to analyse them; even trapped in this house, he can help by finding locations and information that need to be taken down. The more he knows about HYDRA, the better. His laptop’s in his bag, which is still in the entryway, and he pulls it out and stares blankly at the screens as it boots up. Tony did something magical so that he gets internet wherever he is, which is amazing and was well worth putting up with the extensive technical explanation. He doesn’t understand a lot of what Tony says, and it’s only partially because Tony's usually so hyped up on caffeine and lack of sleep that he doesn’t realise when he’s jumped tangents with no explanation. Steve’s big enough to admit that the other reason is that Tony is legitimately a genius and can envision things that other people can’t even fathom.

He scans through files until he can’t concentrate anymore. The Winter Soldier hasn’t surfaced yet, but Steve isn’t really worried about him leaving- there’s no reason for him to give himself up as a prisoner and then just leave. If he has a mission to accomplish, he’s not going to do it by leaving this house. 

So, of course, when he goes to check, the window is open and the Winter Soldier has disappeared. 

“Shit,” Steve says eloquently. 

He checks the bathroom, just in case, and his own bedroom, and the closets, and even in the ceiling cavity. It’s a wasted effort; the Winter Soldier is definitely gone. The wall creaks as he collapses heavily against it and holds his head in his hands. God, Natasha is going to kill him. Everyone else, too. They had the Winter Soldier and Steve’s let him go straight out the window back to HYDRA. What a mess.

He trudges back to the Winter Soldier’s room, scanning for anything that might give him a hint as to how he got out and where he’s gone. He really did just climb straight out the window, Steve decides, but what he just doesn’t understand is _why_. After all the trouble he went to to turn himself in, why would he leave? Nobody gave him any classified information, so it wasn’t that he was after. If he was sent to assassinate the Avengers, he had a perfect opportunity to take Steve out at the kitchen table. It doesn’t make sense. 

Maybe it was just all to much for him, Steve reasons. Perhaps he just went for a walk, to clear his head. And people come back from walks, don’t they? It’s unclear just how long he’s been gone- if he left right before Steve walked into the room, he would have only been gone twenty minutes. That’s not very long, really. Another hour before sounding the alarm is reasonable, isn’t it? 

He knows it isn’t. He sets his watch alarm to go off in an hour and waits anyway.

Twelve minutes before the alarm is due, the Winter Soldier appears silently on the windowsill. He’s not subtle about it; just clambers up and sits himself down on the sill to see what Steve will do. The air is still between them as they wait.

“Where did you go?” Steve asks finally.

“Someone had to do something,” comes the soft reply.

“About what?”

“There was a HYDRA facility approximately 3.4 kilometres from here. I saw it on the television report. It doesn’t exist any more.”

Steve sighs. He understands the need to do something, but sometimes you have to work within limits. “You can’t just _leave_ ,” he explains. “I’m supposed to be assessing whether you’re a threat or not, you can’t just go gadding straight back to HYDRA the second I’m not watching you.”

“So I’m supposed to sit here and do nothing? You don’t have nearly enough people to deal with the amount of HYDRA cells still out there. You’re on a time limit. Now that they’ve been exposed, they’re scurrying to get their operation back underground. If you don’t move fast, you’ll lose your chance.”

He’s back to his soft monotone, nothing like the impassioned speech he gave Steve earlier. It makes him seem even more dangerous.

“Then why did you turn yourself in?” Steve hears himself ask. “If you were just going to take down HYDRA cells, why did you bother coming to us first?”

The Winter Soldier laughs softly. “Because I wasn’t going to,” he says. “I knew what I needed to do, but I couldn’t do it myself, so I handed myself in to your team. I’ve seen them in action; they don’t hesitate to kill when it’s necessary. They’d do it cleanly, at least. But you stopped them, and I don’t understand why.”

There’s a long pause where Steve considers not answering. “I saw your file,” he admits finally. “And maybe it’s selfish, but all I could think of while I was reading was ‘that could have been me’. In another lifetime, maybe… maybe you would have been the good guy and I would have fallen into HYDRA’s clutches. They were very detailed about the torture they put you through. Nobody deserves that kind of treatment. I don’t know if I could live with myself if you didn’t get at least once chance to do the right thing.”

“So here I am, taking it,” the Winter Soldier says. “You can’t tell me that taking out HYDRA isn’t the right thing to do.”

“And how am I supposed to know that’s what you’re actually doing?” Steve reasons. “For all I know, you’re going in there, making sure that anything important has been taken away and destroying any remaining evidence. You could be reporting to a handler on our movements and the layout of Avengers Tower. There could be people coming to capture me right now.”

“But there aren’t,” the Winter Soldier says. 

“The point I’m making is that I don’t know for sure,” Steve says. 

“Then you choose the targets.”

“What?”

“You choose the targets. I’m a weapon; aim me.”

Steve considers it. “Why can’t I just come with you? Surely we could be more effective as a team, and then I'd know for sure what you were doing.”

The Winter Soldier shakes his head vehemently. “No. You’re too conspicuous, you’re not trained for subterfuge. Someone will see you.”

“So? I’m already being targeted by HYDRA.”

“Yes, but your _team_ will know. They’ll wonder why you’re not with me. And then they’ll decide that you _are_ with me, that I went running back to HYDRA like a good dog and you had to hunt me down. That sounds like a _brilliant_ plan, well done.”

Steve would probably be properly chastened if he wasn’t so surprised by the Winter Soldier _sassing him_. 

“Alright,” he says. “I pick the locations, I pick the times, I pick the objective. If you can’t deal with that, then it isn’t happening. I’ll be checking in with my team to get updates, and if they report anything suspicious, then I’m not letting you out of my sight. Are we clear?”

“Perfectly,” the Winter Soldier says. He climbs into the building and shuts the window firmly behind him.


End file.
